At first she didn’t see anyone. Then she realized she was looking too high. Approaching from the direction she’d been heading in, before the car up and died on her, was a gang of boys, almost hidden from her sight by the weeds. She’d been looking for men, because the voices were men’s voices.

As they drew nearer, she readjusted her thinking yet again. The bright moonlight showed a group of little men tramping down the road toward her. She was five-foot-six, but not one of them would come up to her shoulder. Their heads seemed large for their bodies, and they were dressed as though they were returning from some medieval reenactment—a Renaissance Faire, perhaps—with old-fashioned leather trousers and jerkins, and short swords or long knives sheathed at their belts. They all had quivers and carried bows, and three of them were carrying the bloodied remains of some kind of large animal. A deer, perhaps.

About the same time as she was able to make them out better, they became aware of her car, though why they hadn’t noticed it sooner, she couldn’t say. Probably they’d been too busy with joking and congratulating each other on a good hunt. But they had noticed it now.

They stopped, the two not carrying meat immediately nocking arrows to bowstrings as they all looked around.

Lizzie ducked back behind the elm.

“What’s this?” she heard one of them say.

“Someone’s bad luck.”

That brought a round of laughter.

“Maybe good luck for us. Anything inside worth nicking?”

Oh, no, Lizzie thought. Her fiddle case was lying right there on the backseat.

“Anybody inside worth eating?” someone added to more laughter.

Lizzie had been about to step out from behind the tree and take the chance that they were more wind than bite, but at that last comment she stayed hidden, pressed herself tightly against the bark, and tried not to breathe.

“There’s food in the boot,” one of them said.

“Anything good?”

“Chokky bars and biscuits . . . oh, and a jug.”

“Lovely, lovely.”

“ ‘Cept it’s just bloody water.”

“Now who’d waste a good jug on carrying about water?”

Lizzie had left the trunk open while she went to have her pee. Maybe they’d be satisfied with what they found in it. Maybe they wouldn’t look in the car itself.

But then she heard one of the car doors open.

“Looks to be our fool’s a musician. There’s a fiddle case just a-lying here.”

“That can’t be right. Where’s the fiddler who doesn’t drink?”

“Better question still, where’s the fiddler?”

All of Lizzie’s bravery had long since fled. There was something not right about these little men.

She’d thought they were midgets or dwarves.

She’d thought they’d come from some Faire.

She’d thought that she wasn’t really in any danger.